[vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1537371577868{padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]The field of customer analytics provides powerful – and profitable – advantages to organizations. The companies that continue to gain market share attribute their success to understanding the customer. Sometimes, however, executives in organizations need to be reminded of the benefits of customer analytics. Make sure to integrate the following into all your conversations with decision-makers when considering investing in customer analytics.
1. Drive Top-line Revenue – In the past, some companies considered marketing departments and customer analytics as a “cost center.” In that, the relationship between marketing spend and profits was not evident. Using customer analytics enables marketing professionals to show their value and transform their efforts into revenue-generators and justify their existence.
2. Reduce Costs – Campaign execution has been the predominant approach to marketing. And while some companies have experienced success with this tactic, it was hard to understand and anticipate the likely outcomes. Armed with customer analytics, companies can predict the outcome of these efforts based on strong insights derived from data. Long gone are the days of guessing what will happen.
3. Convince Executives – Before the advent of customer-centric organizations and customer analytics, marketers sought to persuade their executives to increase their marketing budgets to fund campaigns. This approach was not met with success for a variety of reasons. First, many decision makers were focused on driving revenue and ultimately profitability. Secondly, many marketers were not able to justify how an increase in marketing spend would drive results. With customer analytics, marketers can now predict revenue impact.
4. Encourages Innovation – It is easy for organizations to think they know what the customer wants. Often these organizations are right but sometimes they are wrong. Customer analytics provides insights into the customer and what they want in a product or service. Not only does it identify problems with existing products or services, but it also identifies emerging customer needs that may not be apparent. This knowledge is powerful in that it provides the organization the impetus to design new products and services based on data, which encourages innovation. This innovation often meets the customers’ needs and promotes customer satisfaction, thus leading to long-term revenue and profitability.
5. Diffuse Internal Politics – In the past, marketers would be subject to the whims of organizational politics. If an executive did not appreciate (or fully understand) the value of marketing, the marketing department suffered. Customer analytics allow the marketer to harness the power of models and metrics to show the relationship between their efforts with the areas in which the executives care most about – revenue and costs.
